James Blake, James Blake, James Blake.

I think I really fell in love with this guy (if you are in my same situation I suggest you to check his interview on Pitchfork). Or more probably I fell in love with his wonderful music videos (we already met him here on WPD when we talked about Limit To Your Love and The Wilhelm Scream).

He has such an incredible taste in visual moving images that I think there’s no music video from him that is not a masterpiece.

But we are here to talk about cool music videos, not only beautiful ones. Well, the music video for A Case Of You it’s something I’ve never seen before.

The song is a cover of Joni Mitchell’s classic A Case Of You (you can listen her performing it live here) and was published by Blake in his 2011 EP Enough Thunder.

The video was directed by Seb Edwards, one of the UK’s top directors working at Academy Films A+ (the same company from which Martin De Thurah comes). Seb Edwards’ “strong cinematic approach to storytelling creates work that is visually striking and emotionally engaging. Since joining Academy, Seb has almost exclusively created award winning work for clients like HTC, the COI, VW, Vodafone, Virgin Media, Luta and most recently Hovis, the Red Cross and Nike”.

Although for Edwards this was his first music video (he usually works on commercials) the result is stunning.

This videoclip praises the collaboration of the actress Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Town and the upcoming Iron Man 3), centerpiece of the entire video: she shaves her legs in the bathtub, does her makeup in a mirror, talks to someone off-screen, looks alternately sad and happy and everything in between. Says Seb: “in many ways it’s a mixture of theatre and cinema, so Rebecca Hall seemed to be the perfect choice given her background in both disciplines. She’s an amazing actress and I knew that she would be able to create a complex and compelling character. A nod to Joni Mitchell herself”.

What is really amazing in this video is a fantastic use of in-camera lighting to reflect the different shades of a relationship and the different moods of the female protagonist. And this was possible thanks to the DOP Stuart Graham, that made an incredible work with lights that don’t stay on reliably (in 2012 this music video was nominated for best Cinematography at the UK Music Video Awards).

“This was an important video for James,” says Seb, “Joni Mitchell went to one of his gigs at the Troubadour in LA and when they met backstage she gave his cover her blessing. A rare compliment apparently. Out of respect for her we both felt that the film should capture the honesty and emotional depth of the song“.

“There’s a purity to James’ cover, so I wanted to do something simple and stripped back. One room, one actress and effectively one shot. It is basically a random collection of memories that are joined together to create a single experience. I wanted to be able to see the lighting and emotional transitions happen in-camera rather than cutting from one scene to the next, so it was quite challenging to shoot in a day“.